In Recent years, as an important task in rescue engineering, a study of a rescue robot for searching inside of rubble to quickly search for victims remained inside of collapsed buildings when a disaster such as an earthquake occurs is actively conducted. An effectiveness of a robot capable of traveling inside of the rubble which is so dangerous that a person cannot enter is attracting attention.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a rescue robot including a body, left and right crawler devices rotatably attached to both side portions of the body, and a driving device driving the crawler devices via radio control or codes.
Note that a quite large number of robots, machine devices or the like have been proposed and developed for industrial usage and the like, although not being intended for rescuing.
As for a radio-controlled rescue robot, there is a vulnerability that a command radio wave may not reach the machine being inside of the rubble. Further, as for a self-moving rescue robot, there is a risk that the rescue robot may go missing while it is conducting a searching operation inside of the rubble. Furthermore, there is a problem that the search cannot be conducted continuously enough since a period of time the rescue robot can operate is limited in terms of energy.
Meanwhile, by supplying an electric energy using wires, it is also possible to continuously conduct the searching operation for a long period of time. However, a balance between a weight of an actuator mounted on the robot main body and a driving torque needed for moving the robot is quite difficult to maintain, so that actually, the continuous searching operation cannot be realized easily.
Further, there are a lot of cases where electrical power sources are mounted on the robot main bodies, and such cases involve the risk of leading to an occurrence of fire disaster inside of the rubble where there is a chance of gas leakage.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-188581